Recently, Tim Brodie of Display Works Inc. emailed KDE thanking us for a job well done. Display Works Inc. has been using KDE as their official desktop environment for some time now, and recently migrated to KDE 3.1. I had a chance to ask Mr. Brodie a few questions about Display Works' experience with KDE. Head over to KDE::Enterprise to read the interview.

There is a large thread in kde-devel about this. Essentially the feeling is 3.2 isn't ready yet, not quite feature complete, too many bugs. The PIM stuff is well along, but not finished. Kmail isn't quite stable with it's new functionality. etc.

I would have to agree with the assessment. There are some serious improvements that all would like to enjoy, the speed of konqueror and improved rendering. But it isn't quite finished yet.

Too bad Konqueror can't be made a seperate package with its own upgrade and release cycles.

I know it is bound to khtml which is bound to kdelibs, but its nice that Safari can be updated every once in awhile on the Mac without upgrading all of MacOS.

Would there ever be a way to package the big KDE apps separately, with their own release cycles? Kmail, konqueror, etc. For those that wish to wait, they can wait for the next KDE release which would have all of the latest apps.

Seems kind of silly that a more stable konqueror has to wait on less stabke kmail, etc.

..just too anxious to see the new khtml with the Safari merges I guess :)

Why not grab kdelibs and kdebase (and perhaps also qt-copy) from CVS or ftp.kde.org snapshots and use DO_NOT_COMPILE env vars to only compile Konqueror and it's dependancies? I would recommend to install it seperate from your stable KDE installation.

That's great! I'm always glad to see what real companies are doing with KDE and I am very happy to see things working so well for Display Works. But, surely there are larger "enterprises", that are using KDE, than a 12 user shop? And please, not the old City of Largo article again.

On other news, Qt 3.2 beta was just released with a number of improvements.

Also is this a bug:

When i save any html file called index.html in my home directory, every time I try to go to the home directory after restarting Konqueror I get that HTMl page and I DON'T KNOW HOW TO STOP IT, I actually needed to go into GNOME just to rename the file, I'm not sure if this affects other KDE filemanagers like Krusader.

On other news, Qt 3.2 beta was just released with a number of improvements.

Also is this a bug:

When i save any html file called index.html in my home directory, every time I try to go to the home directory after restarting Konqueror I get that HTMl page and I DON'T KNOW HOW TO STOP IT, I actually needed to go into GNOME just to rename the file, I'm not sure if this affects other KDE filemanagers like Krusader.

You probably have View->use index.html on. It's useful for viewing local html sites and docs that are in html. A lot of software uses HTML docs. I don't think this is a bug at all, but a feature.

Other KDE file managers, such as Krusader, don't have HTML browsing anyways, so it should not mimic this behavior. I'm not sure why Nautilus doesn't do this by default, but I think it sure should though. Perhaps open up a bug report on gnome's bugzilla. I guess not many people use Nautilus to browse local html documents, but rather use Epiphany or Galeon.

There's a LOT that doesn't work, up to and including adding HTMLAllowed=false to /etc/opt/kde3/share/config/konquerorrc
or making sure that same option is in
/home/$user/.kde/share/config/konquerorrc
and doing a quick chmod -w on that (write-protecting it).

Thanks to the helpful folks on alt.os.linux.suse - sktsee in particular.

"The experiment was a tremendous success. The support issues that would arise time and again had to do with the relative maturity of KDE as a desktop, such as how seamless kprinter was to the end user, and the cut and paste paradigm that seemed broken to them. However, for day to day use, KDE provided a consistent and usable interface for our users."

Is it just me, or does that sentance not make sense? It appears to say two contradictory things at once....

Anyway, nice one KDE people. Good to see companies starting to use free software on the desktop.

They could not understand the X11 copy+paste system. It does indeed confuse people who are used to Windows or MacOS. I've seen people middle click in web pages and expect it to reveal a vertical scrolling widget like in Internet Explorer. Instead, in Konqueror, it either goes back in history or pastes text (if over a text area.) whoops. Of course, people tend to live and learn. I don't think X11 copy+paste is any more difficult for someone who is just starting out computers than anything else. It just provides one more way of copy/pasting, selection paste from middle click.

The part quoted by Mike Hearn above was referring to KDE 2.1.2. That KDE used QT 2.x which didn't separate the "normal" clipboard from the selection buffer clipboard back then leading to the mentioned confusion. This changed with KDE/QT 3.x, and Tim Brodie consequentially says in the interview: "In the beginning of May 2003, we migrated forward to KDE 3.1, and our staff have been very excited; 'blown away' is probably closer to the mark."

I'd guess using index.html when clicking the filemanager mode allows you to customize the filemanager view MS Windows Explorer style, ie. with a header sidebar on the left and some annoying "you are not intended to view this folder" etc. Combined with KDE's Kiosk feature it's surely very useful.